


City of Stars (the voyages remix)

by nasaplates



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Blood and Injury, Drug Induced Mania, Gratuitous Pining, M/M, Medical Procedures, Mentioned Casual Sex, Minor Character Death, Non-Graphic Violence, POV Jeon Wonwoo, The City on the Edge of Forever AU, amok time au, mention of electroshock therapy in a historical context, no trekkie no problem, not any of the seventeens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-15 01:08:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29180796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nasaplates/pseuds/nasaplates
Summary: “You don’t have to be a cautious person to be careful with your heart,” Seungcheol says, eyes gone a bit faraway where he’s looking down at the table, and their hands, fingers weaving in and out of each other. “Not everyone can be fearless in love, and it’s easy to imagine yourself just wishful thinking.” He flickers a glance up at Wonwoo and then twists their hands so they’re in arm wrestling position. Wonwoo firms up his grip automatically but Seungcheol just holds there, not pushing.“It makes sense to be cautious when that kind of hurt is waiting for you if you’re wrong.”---A remix ofvoyagesfrom the perspective of CMO Jeon Wonwoo.In which Wonwoo attends a wedding, saves a life, changes history, and finally stops running.
Relationships: Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Jeon Wonwoo
Comments: 11
Kudos: 40
Collections: Haggly 2: The Remix





	City of Stars (the voyages remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [agonies (Hyb)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyb/gifts).
  * Inspired by [voyages](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22313806) by [agonies (Hyb)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyb/pseuds/agonies). 



> This isn't the fic I set out to write. It wasn't even on the list. And, once it was, it was going to be 5k, at _most._
> 
> And then the Romulans attacked.
> 
> Love you, Hyb. Enjoy.
> 
> ALL the love in the WORLD to my partners in crime, leesa and len, without whom this fic absolutely 110% would NOT exist. thanks for the cheerleading, love you <3

_To love is to stop lying._  
_— Anna de Noailles_

Wonwoo is used to seeing fraught bedside interactions at this point. He’s walked in on more than his fair share of them, and, on the surface, they always leave him extremely annoyed. Everything would be _much_ more efficient if people would refrain from making his patients so damn _emotional_ while Wonwoo is busy trying to _keep them alive._

Yes, he has seen patients rally after being confessed to, and yes, it is well known in the medical community that loved ones being present during recovery has a positive effect on survival rates and decreases future relapse and the likelihood of lasting repercussions. That doesn’t mean he wants to pry apart two idiot ensigns with their tongues down each other’s throats, ever again.

But even he has to stop, breath caught in his chest, when he overhears Mingyu say, _“I need you to know. If you never spoke to me again, you would still be my friend. If I didn’t see you for fifty years, you would still be my friend. I would still be proud to tell people I knew you.”_

He thinks it should hurt more, probably, that Mingyu is so obviously in love with the ship’s Vulcan first officer. But their relationship wasn’t ever really even a _relationship,_ not in the ways that count. Mingyu has always fucked around, and when he’d asked Wonwoo about it, early on with things, if that bothered Wonwoo, Wonwoo had laughed in his face and said, “I don’t care what you do with your dick, Mingyu. Now get out, I have to get ready for alpha shift. The morons in engineering are testing out some something or other and I’ll probably end up having to drag Vernon up to medbay by the god damn hair.”

So, maybe it isn’t a surprise, that there’s only the faint and hollow echo of societally polite loss in response to the way Mingyu’s looking at Jihoon. And maybe it isn’t a surprise, either, that even that disappears in the wake of the way Jihoon looks back at Mingyu. If Kim Mingyu can get a Vulcan to look at him like there’s nothing else in the known universe, well, who is Wonwoo to be anything more than happy for him?

✦✦✦

“They’re idiots.” Wonwoo spits it, with venom, but he gets the feeling the effect is a bit lost on his audience, what with the way his face is currently buried in his crossed arms on the tiny table in the captain’s quarters.

When he straightens up, Seungcheol’s mouth is twisted in that way he has when he’s off duty and he’s trying not to laugh, not for political reasons, but simply because he’s a nice guy and he tries not to truly offend anyone. It’s ridiculous. After everything they’ve been through, as friends and as the CMO to an entirely too fucking self-sacrificing Captain, hiding that laugh is about as likely as hiding a Romulan warbird in his pants. And anyway, being truly offended by Choi Seungcheol is surely a character flaw of some kind, not that Wonwoo doesn’t have any, he’s a bitch and he knows it. But if Seungcheol ever hurts you and means it, well, you had it coming and you better just suck it up and take it.

“You’re laughing, don’t think I can’t tell,” he says, just to get Seungcheol to let go and beam so hard his mouth becomes half of his face and his eyes are just a glittering line above his squeezed apple cheeks. Wonwoo can see his gums and it makes him painfully fond and also angry, how badly he wants to fuck him about it.

“They’re just being cautious,” Seungcheol says, tender and fond.

Wonwoo stares at him like he’s sprouted a second head. “You. Kim Mingyu? Lieutenant Kim Mingyu, who has been treated for burns _fifty-seven times_ since we left Earth? Do you know the math on that, _Captain?”_ he lets himself sound mocking and bitchy, because he is feeling mocking and bitchy, because he has never heard a wilder thing in his entire life than _Kim Mingyu is being cautious._ “That’s once every three weeks. Once every three damn weeks Kim Mingyu touches something hot enough he needs to come get himself fixed. The last time, it was Vernon who brought him, because apparently Mingyu tried to _have sex with him_ while he had _third degree burns_ on his back.”

Seungcheol has given up hiding his laugh, which makes all this untenable ire worth it, even if Wonwoo is apparently in, in, _whatever_ with a man who is clearly soft in the head.

“And Jihoon!” Wonwoo leans into it now, “Jihoon isn’t a damn bit better I don’t care what level his vocabulary and elocution is at,” he pronounces the words as crisply as he can, because he’s steamed. _“Cautious.”_

Mirth still dancing all over Seungcheol’s face and traipsing down his finally-relaxed shoulders, Seungcheol toys with Wonwoo’s fingers where they’re splayed over the table and hums, thoughtful. It makes Wonwoo feel a little bit like a cat being coaxed down from a proper spitting fit, but his hands are tingling nicely and Seungcheol has always thrived on this kind of casual physical affection so he allows it.

“You don’t have to be a cautious person to be careful with your heart,” Seungcheol says, eyes gone a bit faraway where he’s looking down at the table, and their hands, fingers weaving in and out of each other. “Not everyone can be fearless in love, and it’s easy to imagine yourself just wishful thinking.” He flickers a glance up at Wonwoo and then twists their hands so they’re in arm wrestling position. Wonwoo firms up his grip automatically but Seungcheol just holds there, not pushing. “And they’re friends, first, true friends. You saw what it was like when they weren’t talking.”

“Boy, did I,” Wonwoo replies, dry as the Vulcan desert because even the sex with Mingyu had been unnervingly quiet, then.

“See?” Seungcheol smiles softly, like he’s pleased to have made his point. “It makes sense to be cautious when that kind of hurt is waiting for you if you’re wrong.”

They rock their hands back and forth, trading advantage in the thoughtful quiet for a while.

And then one of them, it’s hard to tell which, decides they’re sick of being thoughtful and starts shoving. Wonwoo curses and heaves and Seungcheol’s laugh brightens the room, a sparkling match to the stars that streak gently past.

✦✦✦

Jihoon goes into pon farr, a condition that Wonwoo didn’t have a single clue existed until his best friend of fifteen god damn years dislocates his shoulder in the throes of it. He finds out it’s sexual in nature, an imperative that Jihoon describes as a holdover from when they were a more warlike species, that Wonwoo privately thinks is more likely due to the fact that these intellectual fuckers wouldn’t have babies until the precisely most logical moment otherwise. It doesn’t matter, even though the evolutionary debates are always fascinating to him as a scientist, and the precise process of the fever is flooding his tricorder with data that no Starfleet instrument has ever seen. Absolutely none of that is relevant because if his friend doesn’t fuck his _bondmate_ in a very timely manner then he will die.

For some reason the first thought to enter Wonwoo’s mind when he finds out is, _“You’re supposed to be invincible.”_

It’s childish and unprofessional and useless and so he doesn’t say it but it haunts him, later, after he’s stabbed Jihoon with an assortment of hyposprays, while he’s sorting the ship’s stock of medicine vials in a fit of desperation to _just not think._

The three of them, him and Seungcheol and Jihoon, the ensigns call them the _triumvirate,_ mostly because some tabloid that makes all its money off of Starfleet gossip did a puff piece about them when Seungcheol got his command. Every time the term comes up Seungcheol laughs and Jihoon gets that serene expression on his face that only ever means that he’s trying not to look like he wants to roll his eyes, and Wonwoo _does_ roll his eyes because he decided a long time ago to express Jihoon’s emotions for him whenever he agrees with them. 

But privately, personally, somewhere deep inside him, Wonwoo loves it, that term, _triumvirate._ Loves it enough to con the other two into getting a drunken matching tattoo about it, an achievement he holds more dear than his third doctorate degree. Because he’s always seen them as something special, something separate. Even in the academy, even when he and Jihoon had to manipulate the fuck out of the system in order to get them all on the _Antares,_ Wonwoo was certain deep in his bones that they were always going to be the three of them, that someday they’d have a ship that was _theirs._ That Seungcheol would go righteously striding into danger for the good of all, and Jihoon would efficiently and logically follow him right into the thick of it, and Wonwoo would save every god damn life he could with hands more than just tabloids called magical. And they’d be invincible. Jihoon would be invincible. Because if Death ever came for him Wonwoo would put a scalpel right to whatever squishy and vulnerable parts Death possessed and he’d tell that ghostly little shit to fuck right off. 

Seungcheol and Jihoon were _his,_ and no one got to decide when they died but _him._

✦✦✦

But it’s a child’s fantasy, cheating Death. Wonwoo holds a vial of bright red cordrazine in shaking hands and thinks about his father, wasting away in a biobed, about a cure found two months too late, and knows better. And anyway, Jihoon will be fine, so long as they get to Vulcan in time, and with Mingyu at the helm they’ll no doubt arrive ahead of schedule. Mingyu will drag the ship to Vulcan himself, if he has to. 

Mingyu probably wouldn’t knife Death for him, but even Wonwoo has to admit that’s more stylistic differences than anything else.

So, Jihoon will live. He will survive this, by fucking and not dying, and he will have the most batshit wedding ceremony Wonwoo has personally ever attended, and both of his best friends will be there, and the love of Jihoon’s life will also be there but not as whatever they call the other groom in a Vulcan wedding, and _that,_ that is the sticking point, for Wonwoo.

That’s the part that will taste sour and sick in the back of his throat for the rest of his life.

✦✦✦

“Is there anything I can do to make you stay behind?” The question echoes in the dim soup of grief that Mingyu’s quarters have become and Wonwoo looks at him as cautiously as he would a stranger he’s come to treat for an ailment he knows he can’t cure.

“It’s a wedding,” sticks in Wonwoo’s belly like a dagger. “You don’t have to come. I don’t think you should.” He makes himself say it less like a physician’s recommendations for palliative care than he wants to.

Mingyu freezes, curls himself small like a boy, like Wonwoo’s never seen him do before. He’s known him for years now, as intimate as two people can get, physically, but distant, in all other ways, distant like Wonwoo could protect the wounded parts of them both from each other if he just kept slamming the door in Mingyu’s face. 

It’s a strange war in Wonwoo’s mind, watching Mingyu drag a bloody-looking rictus grin on his face. Those lips wrapped gorgeously around Wonwoo’s cock; the desert stretched between here and some universe where Wonwoo could hold him and tell him it was all going to be alright.

“Of course I’m coming. My friend is getting married.”

“Kaiidth,” Jihoon had said, those steady hands shaking, sweat staining his silver hair dark. _What is, is._ He’s certain Jihoon didn’t mean for Wonwoo to hear the tears caught in the back of his throat. 

There’s no known treatment for a broken heart, not even now. Wonwoo is fairly certain he read somewhere they used leeches, a long time ago. Electroshock therapy. Would the convulsions look as ugly as this, Wonwoo wonders. Would watching Mingyu jerk on a table he’s strapped down to, with a brace in his mouth so he didn’t swallow his own tongue, feel this helpless and stupid and wrong?

Wonwoo leaves. There’s nothing else he can do.

✦✦✦

Seungcheol is steady at Wonwoo’s shoulder as they make their way through the blistering heat of Vulcan to the looming temple ahead. He presumes Seungcheol is steady at Jihoon’s shoulder, too, and that at least feels right. They should be flanking him but some habits are more persistent than Jihoon’s pon farr fever; Seungcheol in the center, Jihoon his right hand man, Wonwoo at his left with his hand on his tricorder like something out of an old Earth western.

Mingyu has Jihoon’s other flank and it should feel imbalanced but it doesn’t, somehow. Wonwoo should feel left out of something, maybe, or Mingyu should. But none of them have time for idle fancies, and so Wonwoo surreptitiously waves his tricorder behind Seungcheol’s back, checking Jihoon’s readings for the twelfth time today. Normal, it says. Normal, except for the way he’s melting from the inside out, hormones ravaging him, waiting to eat him alive.

It’s unexpectedly brutal, once they get inside the only slightly cooler temple and the rites begin. Jeonghan, Jihoon’s bondmate, the Vulcan that stole away their Chief Science Officer long before any of them even met, just says, “No.” Like someone asked him if he wanted dressing on his salad or croutons with his soup. _No._

Seungcheol is stunned at Wonwoo’s shoulder and that solidarity is all that stops Wonwoo from barking _‘Excuse the fuck out of me?’_ Mingyu’s lip is curled like he’s just stepped in Jeonghan’s shit and Wonwoo has possibly never felt more connected to him than he does at this moment.

He doesn’t have time to ask the physician’s question, _‘And what does this mean for Jihoon’s health? How will his fever break now?’_ before the _kal-if-fee_ is being invoked, and isn’t that just typical, if fucking is off the table, fighting it is. 

It’s painfully efficient, which truly, Wonwoo shouldn’t be surprised by at all, here surrounded by Vulcans on Vulcan choking on the thin-aired furnace they call an atmosphere, that it all takes less than five minutes. Jihoon comes to claim his bondmate. His bondmate says no. His bondmate says _I won’t fuck you so you’re going to have to fight whomsoever I choose to the death if you want even a chance to live._ None of Jihoon’s friends get to spit in his eye before they’re being logically and efficiently shuttled out of the room, left to watch Jihoon’s broad back disappear behind a huge stone door, closed with crisp and aching finality.

It takes ten stunned heartbeats before Wonwoo realizes Seungcheol is gripping his hand so tightly Wonwoo idly wonders if it will bruise.

✦✦✦

“We have to get him out of here.” Seungcheol says it with a captain’s tone, brokering no questions, an order he expects to be followed.

“And then what?” Wonwoo says, because it’s his job and his nature to shove past orders that don’t suit him, to ask questions that he knows need answers. “He’s still _dying,_ if we could’ve solved the damn problem on the _Vela_ we never would’ve come here at all.” Their voices are low and hissed, a whispered not-argument that’s ineffective on all levels. 

Wonwoo flashes on the first time he had jerked off in the dorm the three of them shared, late at night while Jihoon meditated in a far corner, blocked off by privacy screens so his incense stayed at least somewhat contained. Technically speaking Jihoon was supposed to get a single, but there was a mix-up in some paperwork somewhere and so they’d all been sharing for about a week by then, finding polite and conscientious ways to never interact, ever, if at all possible. And then Wonwoo, thinking Seungcheol was asleep and that he was being _very quiet,_ had wrapped a fist around his cock and pulled, tight and dry and slow to keep any rustling of the sheets to a minimum. 

Right as he was about to come, the breath getting caught in his chest with the want of it, Jihoon had said, calm and low, “Should you require privacy, all you need do is request it,” and Wonwoo had come, startled, and starkly humiliated, and a little more turned on by that humiliation than he really wanted to think about. 

“What the _fuck,”_ he had muttered, voice going up in question at the end, and for the first time of many Jihoon had heard what he’d meant and replied, “Vulcans have exceptional hearing, Cadet Jeon,” and Wonwoo heard the hidden laugh and that first trace of fondness that Jihoon wasn’t supposed to be capable of at all.

It’s a lesson he isn’t likely to forget, Seungcheol either, considering he laughed so hard at Jihoon’s dry and mocking retelling in the morning he had accidentally sucked some of his breakfast noodles up his nose. 

So, when Mingyu shoots them a furtive glance and makes his way out a side door, Wonwoo doesn’t stop his medical breakdown of all the ways that sedating Jihoon and transporting him back to the ship to sweat this all out would go. He twists his wrist in Mingyu’s direction, and taps the side of Seungcheol’s head like he’s trying to make a particular point stick, keeping his eyes on Wonwoo.

If they notice, the Vulcans surely have as well, but it’s better to be cautious still, and as much as Wonwoo hates to let someone as _incautious_ as Kim Mingyu go off on his own, heartbroken and worried, he trusts his gut when it tells him to let him go.

Seungcheol keeps his eyes on him. He smiles, grim and tight, and Wonwoo hears him saying _I’m with you,_ without needing the words.

✦✦✦

“You _what?”_ Wonwoo does not shriek it but only because he’s still trying not to get them thrown out of this temple. The Vulcans clearly have a great deal of respect for Jihoon, and being named as his friends must be about as rare as rocks gaining sentience, but still. Vulcan hospitality is only going to take them so far, especially when Mingyu’s big plan is to _get Jihoon to fight him instead._

“I,” Mingyu starts, but Wonwoo slashes a hand to interrupt him.

“Oh no, no, I heard you, I’m just wondering what the _fuck_ you’re thinking, here.” Wonwoo is scared, and that makes him angry, angier than Mingyu deserves, but Wonwoo will save his apologies for the minute he _doesn’t fucking die._

“Doctor Jeon,” Seungcheol says, and Wonwoo’s neck cracks with how fast he whips his head around to stare at him. That’s not his name, not to this man. Hasn’t been in fifteen years, not unless he’s making an official captain's log, or speaking in front of an Admiral, or telling a grieving spouse about their loved one’s life on the ship. 

“Wonwoo,” and his voice is softer now which brings Wonwoo’s shoulders back down from his ears. Seungcheol reaches out a hand to cup his elbow and Wonwoo can’t make himself sink into it even though he wants to. “It’s him or me, Wonwoo.” Here his smile turns wry and his voice goes low and intimate, only the two of them can hear. “And we both know which one he’s more likely to come to his senses and bond with, finally.”

Wonwoo thinks about the time he came back to the dorm early, third year in the Academy, and found Jihoon bending Seungcheol in half. He remembers the look on Seungcheol’s face, the way his head was thrown back, the little green marks his fingernails had left on Jihoon’s wide back. Wonwoo had let the door slip closed again and wandered the trails through Golden Gate Park. He remembers stopping at the bison pasture, watching the enormous animals disappear one by one as the fog rolled in from the coast, and doing his absolute best not to think about Jihoon’s hips and the sounds Seungcheol made as he snapped his cock into him, relentless as the tide.

When he’d finally made his way back to the dorm, chilled and damp to the bone in the way only a foggy San Francisco summer evening can make you, it was just Jihoon in the dorm, sipping on a cup of tea. He’d poured Wonwoo a cup without asking and said, eyes far too knowing, “Physical release without romantic connection is practiced in human cultures, is it not?” The question had been so absurd to Wonwoo, who had just gotten a blow job in a disgusting club bathroom not two days prior, that he laughed, too long and too loud, until Seungcheol came out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist and a smile on his face, asking what was so funny.

“Wonwoo?” Mingyu says, now, and he sounds worried, big stupid heart all over his face.

“Okay,” Wonwoo says, voice crisp with anger. Mingyu recoils, and Wonwoo closes his eyes against it. Seungcheol’s hand alights on his shoulder, where it should always be. Where it belongs.

Wonwoo makes his voice softer through sheer force of will, puts a little bit more of his heart in it than he likes.

“Okay.”

✦✦✦

In the end, Jihoon fucks and doesn’t die. He marries the love of his life while he’s at it, even if his two best friends didn’t technically get to see the ceremony, such as it was, but considering he’s pretty sure it was less “ceremony” than “Jihoon sticking his dick in in more ways than one,” Wonwoo doesn’t mind.

Seungcheol smooths over any ruffled Vulcan feathers, but thankfully Jeonghan and his boyfriend help in that regard. And if Seungcheol also pulls Wonwoo away from the door to Jihoon’s stone walled honeymoon suite, Wonwoo allows it, even if he _does_ think he should get to at least _check on their vitals, for fuck’s sake._

“They’re fine,” Seungcheol says, his arm around Wonwoo’s shoulders warm against his neck. “And we’re all better off leaving them to their privacy.” He waggles his eyebrows suggestively, grin so wide it’s splitting his face again, that gummy smile so close to Wonwoo’s mouth he can’t stand it.

Wonwoo shoves him away, smiling against his will, and pretends he doesn’t miss the warmth.

✦✦✦

If Wonwoo thought Jihoon and Mingyu would get more tolerable after getting hitched, he'd have been very, very wrong. Luckily, he's a born pessimist, and knows how possessive and annoying Jihoon can be about getting what he wants, so he's not surprised, just disappointed.

"Can't you order them to stop being so," Wonwoo stops, gesturing widely at their best friend and his husband where they're currently playing a game of 3D chess that somehow looks like both a spun sugar sweet high school date, and foreplay so intense they should write them both up for public indecency.

"Unfortunately, no," Seungcheol says, but he's got his chin propped on his hand and he's looking at them with all the fondness in the quadrant.

"Ugh. But you're the _captain._ What's the point if you can't put a stop to things that nauseate your best friend." Wonwoo pouts. If he hadn't been looking, he might not have noticed the way Seungcheol's eyes catch on his mouth.

"I see I have been replaced," comes Jihoon's coolly smug voice over Wonwoo's shoulder.

"What, as my best friend? Yeah, because Coups here would never make me walk in on what you two were doing last week." It really had been pretty inventive, honestly, and he hadn't known Mingyu was quite so _bendy,_ but still. It's the _principle_ of the thing.

"I did not force or coerce you to interrupt our marital coupling, Doctor Jeon," Jihoon says, bitchy little eyebrow quirked up mockingly.

"You were in a rec room! Where people recreate! Where _I_ recreate! Publicly! In public!" He cries. He jabs a finger in Jihoon's face for good measure. Mingyu walks up to them, face flushed pink with embarrassment, shoulders bashful and hunched.

"Okay, okay, calm down," Seungcheol tries to intervene, but Wonwoo knows it's too late. 

Jihoon adopts the air of a man examining his fingernails before delivering the killing conversational blow, and says, "And we are both well aware Seungcheol would, in fact, make you walk in on activities such as my _husband_ and I were engaged in."

Wonwoo looks at Jihoon's smug little face and sees Seungcheol, sweat at his temples and a moan on his lips while Jihoon's hips piston into him, and Wonwoo can feel himself turning steadily redder with rage. He splutters, and Seungcheol snorts out a laugh he was clearly trying to keep in.

Wonwoo garbles out something about work and then stomps off, not really angry at all. He's happy for them. They deserve their marital bliss.

"Hey," Mingyu says, hand snaking around Wonwoo's elbow. He drops it the second Wonwoo turns, smiling but nervous.

"Yeah?" Wonwoo does an automatic once over, checking for any health concerns he might've missed lately, doctor's checklist going through his mind automatically. _No signs of fever, no confusion, standing evenly on both feet, upright with no hunch to protect the abdomen, no signs of favoring one arm, pupils evenly dilated,_

"I have a book I think you should read," Mingyu blurts out, completely derailing Wonwoo's thoughts.

"What?"

"I." Mingyu seems to deflate a little bit, one sharp canine peeking out as he chews on his lower lip, and then he rallies. Shoulders square, he looks at Wonwoo head on, like this is a mission report, like it's important.

"There's this book, you've probably seen me reading it. It's an autobiography. There's, well. You'd have to read it to get it but." 

And here he pauses again, looks out at the hallway over Wonwoo's shoulder. _He's going to be a captain someday,_ Wonwoo thinks. It's not the first time he's thought it, but it's easy to forget, until Mingyu looks like this. Like he's seeing pieces slotting together that others can't. Like he's willing to take the hits for an entire crew of people, for what matters.

"Sometimes there are things that need to be said. When it's important, when it matters. You say them. Even if it hurts, even if you're scared. You do it anyway. Because real things, true things. It always hurts worse, not to."

There's a moment where Wonwoo thinks about faking ignorance, making a joke about Mingyu being taken now and so while he's flattered he'd really rather not be flattened like a pancake by an angry Vulcan. But the moment passes, him and Mingyu watching each other across the hallway, two strangers who have fucked more times than Wonwoo can honestly remember. Two friends, maybe, someday, if they play their cards right.

"Sounds like one hell of a book," Wonwoo says, cautious.

Mingyu nods. "It is."

"I'll keep it in mind, about the, uh. Saying. Things," he chokes out, awkward and out of practice with sincerity, and Mingyu smiles soft and slow, like he means it.

✦✦✦

They take shore leave on a little planet that's in the middle of a trade route, bustling and chaotic and loud in all the ways Wonwoo doesn't like. He grumbles about it, elbow hooked into Seungcheol's so he doesn't lose him in the towering city streets, until Seungcheol, chuckling, shoulders into a seemingly random building.

It's a cat cafe. An honest to god cafe, filled with cats. Wonwoo watches the cats turn to take in the newcomers, or play at ignoring them completely, and feels himself swell with the kind of shy joy he hasn't felt since he was a kid and his father gave him his first medical bag, embroidered with his initials.

A pretty little tabby winds her way between his ankles and Seungcheol squeezes his bicep, smiling quiet and true.

"How?" Wonwoo murmurs, crouching to let his new friend rub her entire body on his hand like she's been waiting for him to come here and give her pets.

"Happy birthday?" Seungcheol says, rubbing his nose like he's nervous. Wonwoo looks a question at him and he stuffs his hands in his jean jacket pockets. An enormous fluffy grey cat paws at a tassel on the shoulder and Seungcheol shifts to give him better access.

"So, we were on that ice planet, on the day, and I know you always tell everyone not to do anything special for it, but then I had a chat with Captain Bang, you remember him? The Australian, got a Romulan Chief Engineer? Anyway, he mentioned coming by here a couple months ago, and I know you miss Betsy a lot," Betsy was the ship cat on the _Antares_ who slept in Wonwoo's quarters and wailed horribly every time Wonwoo left the ship. Wonwoo's heart clenches tight in his chest.

"And, um, I talked to the owners and these cats are all kept up to date on all the immunizations needed for a ship's animal, and, well. If you like any of them, if you want to. We could take one home?"

Seungcheol asks it, like it's a question that Wonwoo might say no to. He just told Wonwoo that he's going to get him a cat, and he's got a look on his face like Wonwoo's not currently warring between the impulse to cuddle _every single one of these cats right now, immediately,_ and the nearly overwhelming desire to suck Seungcheol's cock.

"Marry me." Seungcheol laughs, relieved, still blissfully unaware that Wonwoo has never been more serious in his life. Wonwoo buries his face in the pretty tabby's belly fur so he can't assume proper on-one-knee position and say it again.

"I'm gonna go chat with the owner, you stay here and make that one fall in love with you some more," Seungcheol says, hand warm and possessive on Wonwoo's head as he passes.

Wonwoo pets cats and piles them on Seungcheol's chest and takes breaks to drink coffee and watch Seungcheol play with a trio of rambunctious kittens and thinks about Mingyu and _saying things._ Seungcheol looks up at him, laughing, a black kitten with a white lightning bolt over one eye climbing up his back.

 _I don't want to ruin this,_ he thinks. _Not now, not when he's so happy. When I'm so happy._

 _Later,_ he decides as they carefully pack up the pretty little tabby Wonwoo's decided to name Sweetie, hands brushing as they try to pet her through the carrier, crooning at her that she'll be home before she knows it.

 _Next shore leave, maybe,_ he resolves as he introduces Sweetie to the _Vela_ and all the officers that will spoil her rotten.

_We've got time._

✦✦✦

Seungcheol dies. 

It happens when Wonwoo is elbow deep in Seungcheol's cracked open chest cavity, trying to put back together what's been rent asunder by some kind of exploding projectile coated in a very effective anticoagulating poison. The biobed shrieks and whistles and chimes and Wonwoo finds another bleeder and seals it with a mix of antivenom, clotting factor, pollen from a fern-like thing Vernon has been letting Wonwoo do experiments on, and good old fashioned saline. He invented it five minutes ago. It will revolutionize treatment of certain kinds of previously fatal _Xenocrotalus_ bites and save potentially thousands of lives.

Wonwoo should call time of death, when Seungcheol's heart gives out. He doesn't.

It would make a better story if he was the one who held Seungcheol's heart in his hand and squeezed each of its chambers in turn, forcing blood through veins when Seungcheol couldn't do it himself anymore. Instead, Wonwoo barks an order and a nurse does it, their hands steady and their rhythm good while Wonwoo chases down all the places Seungcheol has been ripped apart and uses nanosutures to put everything right, neat and tidy underneath the viscera and the tar black poison and the blood blood blood.

After, when Seungcheol's heart starts beating on its own again and his chest is no longer a gaping cavity with all his tenderest parts exposed to the open air of the surgical suite, Wonwoo scrubs under his fingernails and thinks that the nurse deserves a commendation. It'll have to wait, though, seeing as Wonwoo _thinks_ it was Hoshi, but he can't be _sure._

The thing is, there are no people when Wonwoo is in the middle of a surgery. There can't be, he just can't think that way. And this one especially could only have been parts and pieces and the mixture of biology and engineering and alchemy that makes up a living organism. Because if it was a person, for Wonwoo, then he would have to acknowledge it was Seungcheol, and if he did that then all he would be able to do is scream. Scream until his lungs gave out, until the heat death of the universe, until there was nothing left of him to hurt.

✦✦✦

Wonwoo doesn't leave his quarters for days after Seungcheol is stabilized. He had sat by the biobed and watched his vitals like a monk at prayer and the instant those pretty eyelashes had flickered with wakefulness he had seen himself as if from outside of his body, watching through the door of his own office as another heartfelt moron spilled his heart all over his pristine medbay floors. Nauseated, dizzy, hurting in places he didn’t understand, Wonwoo had walked to his quarters, sealed the door, collapsed to the floor, and shook himself to sleep right there.

✦✦✦

It isn't a surprise when the door slides open 47 hours after Wonwoo locks it and Jihoon strides in. It had been a running game, once, Wonwoo coming up with door codes and Jihoon efficiently cracking them with seemingly zero effort.

He doesn't play his part this time, too grey to bluster and yell and demand to know Jihoon's secrets. Jihoon doesn't seem to mind. Jihoon pets Sweetie where she's keeping her vigil at the foot of Wonwoo's bed, places one delicate wide palm on Wonwoo's forehead, detects no fever, sits perfectly on Wonwoo's spinning desk chair, and begins reading aloud from a novel on his PADD.

The book is filthy, a real bodice ripper. Seungcheol always giggles like a child when Jihoon does this, vulgarities falling from that prim mouth in a tone as dry as an OChem textbook.

"You're being illogical," Wonwoo slurs, exhausted and somehow only just realizing it.

"I am not," Jihoon replies.

Wonwoo falls asleep before he can tell him he's full of shit. He knows Jihoon hears the unspoken _thank you,_ anyway.

✦✦✦

The next time he wakes up, he's crying, and Seungcheol is sitting on his bed, looking at him like _he's_ the one that took a fucking exploding arrow to the chest and died right under his hands.

Wonwoo's chest feels cracked open, ribs splayed out. He rolls over to face the wall because he can't control whatever is spilling out of him right now, organs nearly flopping into Seungcheol's hands like landed fish.

For an interminable moment, Wonwoo thinks Seungcheol is going to leave him here like this, that Wonwoo is going to have to scream himself hoarse and fracture his knuckles on the unforgiving walls of his quarters.

Seungcheol doesn't leave. He burrows under the blankets and wraps Wonwoo up in his arms and Wonwoo shudders on a silent sob. Seungcheol tangles their legs together, presses his palm to Wonwoo's sternum, buries his face in the back of Wonwoo's neck. 

His lips move, gentle and tickling, but Wonwoo can't make out the words.

✦✦✦

Wonwoo dives back into work, barking orders as though nothing happened. The nurses, bless them all, just snark right back at him, playing along. If mugs of coffee and tea always seem to appear at his elbow whenever he turns his back for a second, he doesn’t mention it and neither do they.

There’s a soft roll of knuckles at the door, right around alpha shift’s lunch hour. When Wonwoo glances up, Mingyu looks him over, smiling lightly, like he’s checking him for wounds. Wonwoo wonders if he can see them, if they’re visible, somehow, to someone else who has loved and nearly lost.

“Here,” Mingyu says, wiggling the paperback book in his hands. He slips it neatly onto the corner of Wonwoo’s desk, careful not to disturb any of his PADDs and papers and the completely ridiculous collection of half full mugs. “Kept forgetting to drop it off.”

Something lodges itself in Wonwoo’s throat, and he traces his fingertips over the well-loved cover to give it a chance to clear. _Voyages: The Memoirs of Captain Son._ Mindful of the fragility of paper, Wonwoo opens the book to a random page. Printed words march neatly across the faded yellow, and then a ballpoint blue scrawl in the margins, _I’d have killed you for that if I wasn’t so busy keeping your blood in your body, you idiot._

He lets the book fall closed.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, and Mingyu nods.

There’s a beat, something warm and close and nearly awkward between them. And then Mingyu’s eyes go mischievous before he darts in and snatches a piece of candy right from the middle of Wonwoo’s desk.

“Hey!” Wonwoo shouts, trying to smack his arm and missing. Mingyu pops the candy in his mouth and grins, bright bubblegum pink perched between his teeth. “Get out of my damn office, you brat,” Wonwoo snaps, and Mingyu backs up and darts off, giggling around his spoils.

Wonwoo waits until the door slides shut again to allow himself to smile.

✦✦✦

Wonwoo devours the book. He avoids the rec rooms, takes his meals either in his office or in his quarters, reads passages aloud to the cat, loses sleep, and finishes it, finally, in what should be the middle of his sleep cycle. He sets it down, gently, on the soft covers of his bed, and thinks, _Well, fuck._

✦✦✦

It’s harder than Wonwoo expects, working as though it’s a normal day after finishing reading _Voyages._ He feels altered, in that way that great books can make a person feel. Like the world is different than it was. Like _he_ is different, maybe, tipped by words alone over the precipice of a change of state: water to ice, carbon to diamond. Wonwoo (before) to Wonwoo (after).

He’s ready, he thinks, as this new element, created by all the events of his life from birth to finishing that book at 3am while grieving a loss that didn’t happen, to say what needs to be said.

✦✦✦

**cordrazine** (noun) -

cor·dra·zine | \ kôr-drə-zēn \

an autonomic nervous system stimulant drug that creates an increase in myocardial contraction due to an influx of calcium into the fibers, resulting in a more complete emptying of the ventricles and an increase in cardiac work plus oxygen consumption, and also stimulates production of epinephrine and norepinephrine in the Human brain, administered by hypospray injection to treat heart flutter and to restore nerve transmission in a cryogenically frozen body. 

NOTE: The standard dosage of cordrazine for Humans is 0.25 cc. Taking it also comes with a number of side effects, including: elevated blood pressure, dry mouth, tachycardia, restlessness, insomnia, irritability, increased anxiety, paranoia, and death if overdosed.

✦✦✦

“Doctor Jeon to the bridge, paging Doctor Jeon, urgent medical assistance is needed on the bridge.”

The whole ship shakes like a fly that’s been swatted by a giant, the third time in the past ten minutes, and Wonwoo was already in the lift headed for the bridge when the call came through. He doesn’t bother acknowledging, just strides onto the bridge the second the lift stops, foot racing the doors open.

He takes in the chaos with the briskness of a professional, spots Chan on the floor by his station unconscious and makes a beeline for him.

“What’s going on?” he barks out, scanning Chan with his tricorder and reaching into his medical bag at the same time. He has a hunch as to what the tricorder is going to say and so he’s already got the hypospray and the vial of cordrazine in his hand when it beeps and tells him he’s having a cardiac episode. No doubt all the shaking rattled some of the electrical loose and their wunderkind got a nasty shock out of it. He’s had some mild heart murmurs in the past, not a problem so much as a small footnote on his file. Wonwoo makes a mental note to bold that footnote after this.

“Cordrazine?” Seungcheol says. “That’s tricky stuff...”

Something in his tone makes Wonwoo flick a glance at him even as his hands are automatically loading up the cordrazine. As a starship captain Seungcheol had taken basic first aid for commanders, and as Wonwoo’s friend he’d taken several more field medic courses and listened to Wonwoo ranting in medical jargon enough times to pick up more than your average member of command track. It wasn’t unusual for them, and Jihoon too, to talk at length about emergency treatments, what’s best for which species, which doctor exposed himself as a quack by fucking up the dosage of one thing or another. Seungcheol even, on very rare occasion, thought of things that Wonwoo didn’t. But it wasn’t like him to even hint at questioning Wonwoo’s choices in a situation like this, surrounded by crew members and someone’s life on the line.

He makes a note to ask him about it, later. Things have been awkward between them since Seungcheol’s run-in with the exploding arrow, and Wonwoo’s reaction to it. Wonwoo already has things he wants to say to him, after all..

 _Later,_ Wonwoo thinks, and injects the smallest amount of cordrazine possible into Chan’s carotid artery.

The effects are immediate, Chan sucking in a deep breath, eyes fluttering open.

“Doc,” he croaks out, and Wonwoo lets himself smile at the kid while he checks his pupils, fingers light on his wrist to measure his heart rate. Steady and strong.

“Hey, kid. Let’s get you up, put you back to work.”

Wonwoo’s just gotten him up and put Chan comfortably into Mingyu’s waiting mother hen hands, when the ship lurches again, hard.

It’s almost funny, later, how much it’s like one of those bad horror holofilms. One second he’s cursing under his breath and thinks the worst thing that’s happened is bashing his shin on Mingyu’s chair. The next he realizes the vial of cordrazine, which had previously been full except for the 0.25ccs in Chan’s bloodstream, is completely empty, and there’s the distinctive pain of a hypospray injection on his abdomen.

“Fuck.” He thinks it very loudly, but he’s fairly sure it’s Seungcheol that says it, Seungcheol who’s next to him, hand on his elbow, other hand hovering over Wonwoo’s stomach like he could pull the drug out somehow, with his bare hands.

The first thing Wonwoo notices is how hot it is on the bridge, the lights beating down on him hotter than the Vulcan desert. There’s a flush rushing through him, settling in the usual places; his cheeks, his ears, across his chest, sweat already soaking through his uniform at the armpits. His mouth goes dry as a bone, tongue suddenly thick in his mouth.

And they’re staring at him. They’re all...staring at him, everyone on the bridge. He knows them, they’re his friends, his patients, but he’s. He’s certain, suddenly, that he’s been a fool. Friends. What a laugh. They’re laughing at him now, they know he’s a failure, a fool, an arrogant pretentious undeserving fool. They must, it’s so obvious. 

Wonwoo shakes off the arm at his elbow, claustrophobic, needing space, he can’t _breathe,_ and he looks at Seungcheol, one step up by the captain’s chair, and Wonwoo wants _intensely_ to cry. He’s jeering at him, him and the Vulcan standing at his shoulder, both of them sneering. They’ll start laughing soon, he knows it. Seungcheol’s hand is still outstretched but now it looks less like a comfort and more like a claw, a club. A weapon to mock and to maim.

“Oh,” Wonwoo says, shaking hard now. “You hate me, don’t you? I see it now.” The one in yellow takes a step toward him and he shouts, “Don’t! Don’t hurt me, don’t _touch_ me, back the _FUCK up!”_

He brandishes his phaser at these, these, assassins, these would-be murderers. These motherfuckers will never take him alive, no, not him. Maybe he’s a fool but he’ll live, god damn it. He’ll crawl off somewhere small, somewhere safe, somewhere none of these impostors in yellow and blue and red will ever ever find him, and he will lick his wounds when he does but he won’t let them kill him. He won’t let them _win._

✦✦✦

_Captain’s log, Stardate 2259.121_

_This will be a compilation of the events that occurred in relation to the Guardian of Forever. All supplemental logs regarding this incident recorded by myself and all officers involved, barring Commander Jeon Wonwoo who remains under medical leave at this time, will be linked to this file for completeness of record. It is the recommendation of all of the senior staff, again barring Commander Jeon Wonwoo, that the planet and the space surrounding it to a diameter of one million space miles, be marked with the highest danger rating, a no-fly zone, and the details of the true nature of this...being be designated top secret, for reasons which I am confident will be obvious by the end of this log._

_[Pause - rustling, sounds of shifting, the clink of a mug being set down]_

_The planet’s time ripples, now known to have originated from the Guardian of Forever, and the damage they did to the ship are discussed at length in my first captain’s log, and Commander Jihoon’s extensive research into the time ripples themselves. Ensign Chan’s injury and treatment, in lieu of Doctor Jeon’s medical report, have been recorded by Nurse Kwon. Nurse Kwon has also discussed Doctor Jeon’s accidental cordrazine overdose, as have I, Commander Jihoon, Lieutenant Kim Mingyu, and Ensign Chan. The events surrounding Doctor Jeon’s paranoid mania due to the overdose are also discussed in those logs._

_To keep the summary as brief as possible: Doctor Jeon treated Ensign Chan’s heart flutter, the ship went through an unexpectedly large time ripple, Doctor Jeon accidentally injected himself with well over ten times the recommended dose of cordrazine, and he became agitated, paranoid, and violent, just as would be expected given the known side effects of the drug._

_It is the recommendation of all relevant crew, and most especially myself, that no demerits, marks upon his record, or punishments of any kind whatsoever be placed on Doctor Jeon for any of his actions during this event. He acted admirably at all times while lucid, and he is in no way responsible for his actions while under the effects of the cordrazine. I..._ we _are all simply glad he has survived the accidental overdose and returned to us safely. All side effects are believed to have worn off at this time, and his current medical leave status is purely out of an abundance of caution._

_[Pause]_

_And because he hasn’t taken a single one of his physician recommended leave days, not counting ship-wide shore leave, in 3,115 days._

_[Pause - rustling, another pause, the clink of a mug being set down]_

_Doctor Jeon, after evading the security team attempting to escort him to medbay to detox, struck the ensign manning the transporter with his phaser and beamed himself down to the planet’s surface. No lasting harm was done to the ensign, who I am told never fully lost consciousness, and spent most of her time in medbay asking if the doctor was alright. According to preliminary discussions with Doctor Jeon, we believe he was suffering from the delusion that everyone was, as he put it, “out to get him,” and so he went to the planet’s surface hoping to find somewhere safe._

_The away team to seek out Doctor Jeon and return him to safety consisted of myself, Nurse Kwon, Lieutenant Kim, Lieutenant Commander Boo, Commander Jihoon, and a handful of security officers. On the planet’s surface, which consisted mostly of sharp grey rocks and equally grey atmosphere, we discovered the Guardian of Forever. Well, to say we “discovered” it...him? [Pause] It. Anyway, it’s incorrect to say we discovered it when that “discovery” consisted of me looking at a very circular stone archway which was emitting large amounts of power and displaying a dizzying light show of flashing images, asking what it was, and it answering me. It named itself as the Guardian of Forever, and, through its own description, is both machine and being, and also neither. Commander Jihoon deduced that it was a time portal, and the Guardian confirmed._

_The search parties came back then, bringing Doctor Jeon with them, still fearful and clearly suffering from paranoid delusions. He tried to escape again, but Commander Jihoon subdued him with a Vulcan nerve pinch before he could._

_[Pause - a sigh]_

_While Doctor Jeon was unconscious, we discussed the possibility of sending one of us through the portal, just a day, at most, so that we might prevent the accidental overdose from happening. One overly-long philosophical and logistical conversation with a talking rock later, and Doctor Jeon, who had regained consciousness while we weren’t paying attention, bolted away from us and took a flying leap through the still-running portal._

_[Pause]_

_We attempted to hail the_ Vela _to no avail and, after determining that the communicators were working fine and that nothing about the time ripples emanating from the Guardian should have prevented surface-to-ship communication, I realized that wherever..._ whenever _Doctor Jeon was, he had changed something. Something big. The Guardian confirmed my guess before I even asked, informing us that Earth that was was no longer. We were stranded, all of history having been changed dramatically, and with no way to call for help and no solutions forthcoming from the Guardian of Forever, I made the call that one of us would need to pass through the portal, to the same point in time that Doctor Jeon entered, or as near to it as we could get considering how quickly the portal seemed to be shifting, find him, fix whatever he changed, and bring him home. I needed someone to stick behind, in case the worst should happen, and so, with some intense debate, it was decided that Lieutenant Kim would go with me through the portal._

_[Long pause]_

_We went after him. Of course we did. Even if the fate of the universe didn’t depend on it, we couldn’t have done anything else._

✦✦✦

_Personal log, Doctor Jeon Wonwoo Stardate 2259..._ Christ, _has it only been a_ day? _Fucking hell. Stardate 2259.121_

 _I fucked up. I mean,_ really _fucked up._

 _Everyone keeps telling me accidents happen, like I don’t know that, CMO of a fucking starship there the number one cause of injury is tripping over shit, and I’ve got Hoshi telling me_ ‘accidents happen.’ _Telling me, me! With my shiny framed xenopsych degree hanging on my damn office wall! That I was drugged, and not in control of my actions._

_I know._

_I fucking_ know.

_But still._

_[Pause]_

_He probably hates me. No, he doesn’t, I know that, he’s. He doesn’t hate people who_ shoot at him, _but._

_[Long sigh]_

_How the fuck am I gonna tell him_ now?

✦✦✦

Wonwoo remembers fear. Fear and cold, and then somewhat more cold than fear, and then explosions and cold and fear, and then kind eyes, and a strong arm helping him up and taking him somewhere safe.

By the time he gets to what’s obviously an outdated ‘Fleet issue evacuation center, he’s mostly lucid, although being surrounded by tech that’s at least 100 years old makes everything feel like a dream longer than it should.

Kind Eyes sets him on a bunk. He’s got a ‘Fleet issue undershirt on, a black tank that barely covers his pecs, his long-sleeved uniform tied around his waist, leaving the sleeve stripes visible. Commander, though the old-school gunmetal grey makes it hard to tell what track. There’s an extra stripe marking him as someone’s First Officer. 

“I like the uniform,” Pecs McGee says. He reaches out to pluck at the shoulder of Wonwoo’s uniform but Wonwoo skitters back, instinctive, heart rate through the roof. He’s solid enough now to know it’s the cordrazine still causing problems. He’s in the clear, as far as not dying goes, but it’ll be hours yet, maybe even days, before he stops seeing shapes in the corners of his eyes, and sinister motivations in innocent actions.

“Woah,” Biceps whistles, not unkindly, hands up, palms out. “Sorry, friend, just wanted to feel the material. It looks new, or, well. It looks dirty, actually, no offense,” he gestures down at himself, smiling ruefully, “clearly I don’t mean anything by it. But it looks fancy. Must be the latest issue, huh?”

The shirts are old, actually, no doubt the crews just setting out for their five year missions are getting some sparkly fashion adjustments because Starfleet hasn’t ever settled on a uniform design for longer than five years, like beings will stop taking them seriously if they’re not out on the reaches being fashion forward. It confuses Wonwoo, the question. Just where _are_ they?

“Where are we?” Wonwoo asks, looking around him for some kind of clue. Last he remembers he was on the ship, getting fucked up on way too much cordrazine. How did he get _here?_

“Enceladus,” Dirty Shirt replies, and really, it’s been fun but Wonwoo needs a _name._

“I’ve been calling you Tits in my head,” he blurts out completely against his will and immediately wants to drown himself in the nearest body of water. Or a bucket. A bucket would be fine.

The other officer looks stunned for all of two seconds before he’s doubled over laughing.

“Oh my _god,”_ he gasps out, and Wonwoo stares at the wall, painfully glad he doesn’t blush. “Oh that’s _good._ Sorry, I’m Wonho, ah, sorry, Commander Lee. I’ve been here for a while now, helping the civilians expand the settlement here, so I’ve lost some of my military rigor,” he smiles and waggles his eyebrows, even though Wonwoo’s struggling to find the pun. Rigor? Dicks? Is he talking about erections?

“Ah,” Wonwoo hums out, “that makes sense.”

Except it doesn’t. Enceladus? There hasn’t been a settlement on Enceladus since —

“Hey, Wonho? I was wondering — oh my god, _Wonwoo?”_

It’s Mingyu, popping his head in the doorway. He’s in the same gunmetal grey uniform, this one a one-piece like the engineering lackeys usually wear. No stripes at all marking him as a civilian assistant. But why...?

Wonwoo doesn’t have time to follow his cloudy, exhausted thoughts before Mingyu is screaming down the hall, “Seungcheol! He’s here, it’s Wonwoo, he’s _here,”_ and then there’s Seungcheol, looking at him like he hasn’t seen him in months.

Wonwoo’s emotions are disjointed, out of control, and he’s medically aware of it the same as he is his too-high blood pressure and erratic heartbeat, but medical knowledge means jack shit in the face of how fucking _happy_ he is to see Seungcheol.

“Coups,” he whispers in a voice so relieved and broken he’d be mortified by it any other time, but now he just flings himself into his arms as hard as he can. Mingyu laughs in his ear and wraps around them both, rocking and jumping. Wonwoo, who can count the number of times he’s cried since he ran away from home and joined the space circus that is Starfleet, feels tears welling up in his eyes.

“Oh!” Wonho says behind the six-legged creature the three of them have become. “So this is the friend you’ve been looking for, oh I’m so glad!”

He’s smiling, soft and genuine as it comes, when they finally untangle themselves enough for Wonwoo to look at him.

“Oh my god,” Wonwoo murmurs, klaxons going off in his head. “You’re — ”

“Wonderful!” Seungcheol shouts over him, beaming wide and friendly while pinching Wonwoo’s hip. “You’re so wonderful for finding him for us, I don’t know how to thank you enough.” He bows a little, which is a feat since he seems hell bent on keeping two hands on Wonwoo at all times.

Mostly Wonwoo thinks it’s nice, being held. But the voice in the back of his mind still whispers. What if he’s doing it to control Wonwoo? What if he’s going to throw him in the brig when they get back home? What if he’s angry, and wishes Wonwoo had never been found at all?

“Yeah!” Mingyu chimes in, and he’s touching Wonwoo too, a hand on his wrist that keeps flopping between a comfort and a shackle. Wonwoo suddenly feels seasick. “Thank you, Wonho. Don’t let us distract you!”

Wonho, Commander Lee, Lee Hoseok, First Officer to Captain Son Hyunwoo. Wonho, who is (was? What was _happening)_ most undoubtedly in love with his Captain, a man who died (dies?) decades before Wonwoo was born, even more decades before Wonwoo read a memoir he personally annotated like a love letter. A man who doesn’t look at all like he watched the man he wrote those notes to die horrifically, exploding over the skies of — 

“Enceladus,” Wonwoo whispers, horrified.

He’s a bright boy, Wonwoo, always has been. And it doesn’t take a brain like his to connect dots like this, not when Captain Son himself bursts through the door, looking every inch the hero Wonwoo knows him to be.

“Romulans are attacking,” Captain Son says, voice smooth and commanding and sure.

 _“Fuck,”_ Wonho barks.

“Oh _no,”_ Mingyu breathes, voice cracked and broken, hand bruise-tight on Wonwoo’s wrist.

“Cap — ”

Seungcheol claps a hand over Wonwoo’s mouth, barely leaving him room to breathe through his nose. Like a dance they coordinated ahead of time, Mingyu turns his back on Captain Son and his First Officer, facing Wonwoo with eyes so sad they hurt to look at, boxing him in and pressing him back against Seungcheol’s chest. Wonwoo squirms until Seungcheol says in his ear, “Don’t. Trust me, Wonwoo. _Don’t.”_

They’ve missed half an argument in the time the two of them have spent keeping Wonwoo from warning them, from stopping Captain Son from —

“I have to, Wonho! I don’t have a damn _choice!”_

“Of course you have a choice, you fucking idiot! You could help me get the civilian shuttles out, you could call for help, you could — ”

“The civilian shuttles won’t get out any faster with two of us, and calling for help won’t do us any good, because we don’t have _time.”_ Captain Son grips Wonho’s shoulders, eyes boring into him like he’s the only one in the room. He gentles his voice and says, “We don’t have time.”

“No,” Wonho says, shaking his head, taking a step back from Captain Son and breaking his grip. Captain Son clenches his fists gently on the space Wonho used to be. “No, fuck you Shownu, you _know_ it’s suicide to go up there. Lay cover-fire from the ship my _ass._ You _know it.”_

“Wonho — ”

“No, listen to me, don’t fucking do this. We’ll find another way. We _always_ find another way. Just,” Wonho runs his hands through his hair, grabbing two fistfuls of it and tugging, helpless. “Promise me.”

Captain Son’s face cracks open, sadness spilling everywhere. “I — ”

 _“Promise me.”_ Wonho takes back the space he’d given up, grabs the front of Captain Son’s shirt in his fists. Mingyu is shaking, Wonwoo can feel it in his wrist, in the space where his body keeps caging Wonwoo in.

“Promise me you’ll give me a chance to find another way.”

Seungcheol isn’t shaking. He’s rock steady, holding Wonwoo together like they’ll both fly apart if he doesn’t.

Captain Son nods, sad and slow. “I promise,” he whispers. And then he takes Wonho’s hands in his own, and presses two swift kisses to the knuckles, his eyes never leaving Wonho’s face.

And then he’s gone.

Mingyu’s eyes fall closed.

✦✦✦

_Captain’s log, Stardate 2259.121_

_[Long, drawn out silence]_

_We stayed on Enceladus during the attack. It wasn’t... We weren’t necessary, obviously. We weren’t there the first time around, and so how could we be necessary now?_

_But we helped where we could. Directed civilians to shuttles, cleared debris when the warbirds started coming down in pieces. Wonwoo, ah. Sorry, Doctor Jeon treated some of the lightly wounded where he could. Mostly Commander Hoseok ran a tight ship, and did it well. There were no casualties, which is even more astounding to witness than it is to read as a statistic. No casualties._

_[Pause]_

_Just the one._

_Just Captain Son._

_[Longer pause]_

_We watched him, or the ship, rather. Commander Lee swore prolifically, in an impressive number of languages, when he saw the ship firing on the warbirds. I don’t mind saying that, since that knowledge won’t be a surprise to anyone who knew him well at all. Not that many people like that are left, now._

_But anyway._

_We were there, when the ship came down._

_[Pause for 0:34 seconds]_

_And then we were back, the Guardian of Forever apparently satisfied that we had repaired what had been broken._

_Because Captain Son died, because Commander Lee never — ._

_Because he died, the faction of Romulans that attacked Enceladus, a faction bent against peace with the Federation, were defeated, to a man. Because they were defeated, the treaty with Romulus was upheld, no more factions joined the cause against us. The Romulans didn’t go to war, and they didn’t win._

_Earth still exists, as does Vulcan._

_Because Doctor Jeon Wonwoo didn’t warn him or Commander Lee of what was about to happen, because I didn’t, because Lieutenant Kim didn’t, Captain Son died. He died when he did, in the way he did. He died a hero greater than any of us would have ever known, without this event having occurred._

_We owe him our lives, all of us. Every being that will ever hear this recording, and more._

_[Pause for 0:18 seconds, followed by the sound of a throat clearing]_

_Any additional notes will be added in a supplemental log._

_End recording._

✦✦✦

"You know you're being stupid, right?"

Wonwoo sighs loudly, drags it out into a groan, deflating backwards in his chair until he's all out of air and his ass is barely on the seat. Seokmin, the asshole, laughs at him.

"You know you're being a bitch, right?" It's a bad retort and he knows it but it's all Wonwoo's got right now. He's tired. He's _very_ tired. And yes, he does know he's being stupid.

In a classic therapist move, Seokmin stays silent, waiting Wonwoo out. It's annoying, being on this end of the couch, as it were. Routine psych evals are much more tolerable when he's the one running them.

He pulls himself back upright and sticks his tongue out at Seokmin's _'I am very patient and understanding'_ professional face. It makes Seokmin break character and grin, so Wonwoo gives himself a point.

"Listen." Wonwoo stops because he can't for the life of him figure out where to go next. 

_I made my long time fuckbuddy slash best friend’s husband slash almost-friend witness the death of his hero, who he projected on as a coping mechanism after the death of his parents?_ Technically true, but not actually why he's currently, to put it bluntly, fucked in the head.

 _I got real high, threatened literally everyone I love in the world, fucked up history so bad people had to come get me and unfuck it, and then watched a man lose the love of his life in a scene that literally came out of my own nightmares?_ Yes, but they've been over that part. It wasn't his fault, he wasn't of sound mind, he just wanted to be safe, and then, when he'd started to recover, he just wanted to do what was right.

 _I'm in love with my best friend who is also my captain, a man not even remotely known for keeping his romantic feelings a secret, who has never once hinted at having romantic feelings for_ me, _and the minute I resolved to tell him how I felt with no regrets I fucked up, put him through a months-long traumatic event, and now I can't tell if he's avoiding me because he hates me or if I'm suffering from some form of leftover paranoia and he just doesn't feel like checking in on me at all?_ Well. That's the last fucking thing he wants to say out loud.

"Oh for fuck's sake, please stop running around in circles in that abandoned surgical suite you call a cranium." Seokmin's tone is gentler than the words, his face even more gentle than that. There's steel underneath the softness, though. Wonwoo has known him too long not to see it.

"I'm scared," Wonwoo makes himself say.

"Of what?"

Wonwoo swallows. "That...Not that the delusions were right, I know they weren't, I do. They were drug-induced. They weren't real."

He pauses and picks at a loose thread on the arm of his chair.

"But?" Seokmin prompts.

"But what if there's some truth to it? What if he — " he catches himself, looks up at Seokmin, who, to his credit, seems entirely unsurprised that Wonwoo's fears have a singular focus. Wonwoo sighs, and gives in.

"I'm scared Seungcheol resents me, that he's playing nice like you know he does. That he's only tolerating me, and wishing I were...away from him. That I'd just leave him alone."

It's quiet in the office, no sound but their breathing, and Wonwoo picking at that thread, and the ever-present hum of the engines.

"It'd make it easy for you if you were right, wouldn't it?" Seokmin says, finally, and Wonwoo's so shocked he stops picking.

"What?"

Seokmin's eyes are piercing, and Wonwoo feels pinned to his chair.

"If he resented you, if he was the type of man to lie like that, to merely tolerate you and pretend at brotherhood, it'd be easy, wouldn't it?"

"What the fuck," Wonwoo says, because _what the fuck?_

"You'd get to say 'oh well it's not my fault, I tried, he can't stand me, no one can,' and you'd get to package up your hurt in a way you could understand. You'd get to move on, wounded, sure, forever limping through life with prosthetic relationships, always certain you were cold and broken and unlovable. And it would be easy, because you wouldn't ever have to be in love with another person, a real person, who annoys you and hurts you, who you annoy and hurt no matter how hard you try not to. You'd never have to go through all that mess, if you're right, never even have to open yourself up to rejection, really. That's why you're here wrecking my furniture, Wonwoo. Because if Choi Seungcheol doesn't like you, doesn't love you so much he'd _risk being stranded in time forever,_ then you never have to go through the mortifying ordeal of being known."

Wonwoo sits there, stunned, for so long his toes go numb where they're trapped awkwardly under his thigh.

He breathes.

The engines shift so subtly most people wouldn't know they just dropped to Warp 2.

His voice is thin with disuse when he finally manages to choke out, "Did you just roast me using an old Earth meme?"

Another pause.

"Yes," Seokmin replies. "Yes I did."

They start laughing simultaneously, high and bordering on hysterical. Wonwoo is crying by the time he calms down, and they both pretend it's only the laughter that did it.

✦✦✦

Wonwoo walks slowly back to his quarters, distracted. So distracted, in fact, that he only notices Jihoon waiting outside his door as he’s about to lift his palm to the scanner.

Jihoon looks up at him evenly and raises one eyebrow dripping with snark. 

“Yeah yeah, Vulcans have superior senses, I am literally a doctor, come in if you’re coming in,” he says, pushing past Jihoon and trusting him to follow. 

Sweetie is waiting for him, so he immediately drops into a crouch to say hello, baby talking her because it never fails to make Jihoon look like an exhausted old man trapped on a starship filled with crazy people. "Hello hello my Sweetums, my baby girl, yes daughter of mine, my poop baby, my perfect precious stinky baby." She laps up the praise, purring like a warp core, and Jihoon very obviously dies a little inside.

Wonwoo's knees pop when he stands and tosses the informal jacket he wore to his appointment onto his coat hook. He toes off his soft shoes, strides unerringly to his decidedly not regulation mini-fridge full of beer, and pulls one out for himself and tosses a bottle of cider Jihoon pretends not to like over his shoulder. There's the light _slap_ of a bottle hitting a palm, and the hiss of Jihoon popping the cap off with his bare hands.

Wonwoo turns and leans back against his desk, taking a long deep swig of the beer as a cover while he examines his friend. All normal, not even a sign of nerves. He looks happy, settled. More himself, somehow, than Wonwoo’s ever seen him. The doctor stands down, and Wonwoo lets his shoulders settle.

“So,” Wonwoo says once Jihoon’s done his own scan of Wonwoo and he’s apparently come up fine by whatever metrics the Vulcan uses for these things.

Jihoon doesn’t reply, ‘So,’ like Seungcheol would, he just gives him a pissy little look and takes another prim drink of cider. Sweetie weaves between Jihoon's ankles, the smitten little traitor that she is.

“I wished to ensure that you had recovered sufficiently from the cordrazine overdose.”

It’s utter bullshit in the way only Jihoon would ever even try to pull off. Wonwoo’s files are unsealed for the First Officer, one of three people on the ship who could declare him unfit for duty. If he wanted to know about his _health_ he didn’t need to cross half the ship to come to his quarters.

“And?” Wonwoo asks, picking at the label on the bottle. “How’d I score, Commander?”

Jihoon looks at him. Just looks, collecting data, processing it, seeking truth. It’s one of Wonwoo’s favorite things about him, aside from his bitchy little jokes. When Jihoon looks at you, he’s just looking. No more, no less.

“All we have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given to us,” Jihoon says, measured like a recitation.

“And who are you quoting at me this time?” Wonwoo asks lightly, just this side of mocking. He hates being preached at. “Surak? Che? David Bowie?”

The corner of Jihoon’s mouth quirks. “Tolkien,” he says, deadpan.

Wonwoo snorts, and then laughs outright. “You’ve _definitely_ been spending too much time with Mingyu.”

Jihoon eyes soften noticeably, and he honest to God _smiles._

“He is my husband and bondmate.” He says it in a voice threaded with awe, and Wonwoo’s heart clenches hard.

“He sure is,” Wonwoo says, rubbing absently at his chest. “He sure is.”

They finish off their drinks in comfortable silence. Jihoon stands and takes the bottles to the refresher when they’re empty, glass clinking gently as it disappears to be deconstructed and reconstructed into something new, nothing wasted on a starship, every scrap repurposed to make it all go.

“How is he?” Wonwoo asks, blinking away from his contemplation of the garbage chute. Jihoon starts folding Wonwoo’s laundry in a gesture years away from being necessary and still automatic for him. It never enters Wonwoo’s mind that Jihoon might not know he's talking about Mingyu.

“He’s well,” he says, too simple to be evading some darker truth.

Wonwoo, for lack of a loose thread to pick at, pets Sweetie where she's sprawled in the seat Jihoon so foolishly abandoned. Jihoon will never fall for the awful play at nonchalance, but Wonwoo can’t help but try.

“And Seungcheol?”

Jihoon’s movements stutter, no more than a millisecond, but Wonwoo could read this man in the dark if he had to.

“Have you asked him?”

Wonwoo’s dread rises. So he _is_ avoiding him.

“No.” He sounds small, but it’s alright, here. He’s in his own damn room and besides, Jihoon couldn’t possibly judge him for it.

The room fills with the kind of silence that can only live where Jihoon is choosing his words carefully, measured as his martial arts practice, and just as potentially deadly.

“The captain’s log regarding the incident is accessible to all who were involved,” is all Jihoon says in the end, folding Wonwoo’s boxers into impossibly tiny neat little squares that somehow perch on their ends in his dresser when he’s finished. Ordered, orderly. Everything as it should be.

An elegant finger flicks Wonwoo right in the center of his forehead. Jihoon lets his impatience show all over his face for once.

“You are not in trouble,” Jihoon says gravely. “You are his wife.”

Wonwoo stares. Jihoon, utterly unbothered by staring, stares back.

“Have you been talking to Seokmin?” Wonwoo asks. Jihoon settles his hands at the small of his back and stares at the wall above Wonwoo’s head.

“He has sent me several videos which he insists are vital to the full understanding of Earth culture and history.”

The air is thick with Wonwoo absolutely not breathing. If he breathes he will lose it completely.

“I believe he referred to them as,” Jihoon pauses, “TikToks.”

Wonwoo gives up the ghost, and laughs so hard he has to put his head between his knees and wheeze.

Jihoon huffs in utterly fake annoyance and Sweetie follows him out when he leaves in the middle of Wonwoo’s second hysterical laughing fit of the evening. This one doesn’t end in tears, but it’s close.

✦✦✦

Wonwoo listens to the captain’s log. Well, first he listens to Jihoon’s log, and then Hoshi’s, Vernon’s and Chan’s, the poor Ensign he hit, a couple of the security team. Then he watches the entire Lord of the Rings holofilm series, because while Seokmin cleared him for duty, he doesn’t have a shift for two more days because Jihoon does the roster and he has never once played by any rule he didn’t like.

 _Then_ he listens to the captain’s log. The whole thing, every minute of it, straight through because he knows he won’t have the courage otherwise.

And then he cries.

He thumbs through _Voyages,_ all the pages he didn’t mark because he knew he wouldn’t need to. He gets teardrops on Sweetie, but she doesn't seem to mind. He gets even more on the old paper and he's terrified the ink will smear until he decides it's only right, considering he’s in it now. He was there.

And then, after he’s done crying and he’s scrubbed the puffy eyes out and put on some moisturizer and his best bright blue eyeliner for the armor of it more than the look, he goes and gets his man.

✦✦✦

Because fate really seems to like laughing at him sometimes, Wonwoo nearly collides with Seungcheol on his way out the door, staggering badly enough that Seungcheol's steady hands take him by the shoulders to keep him upright. 

They stare at each other for a drawn out moment while Wonwoo's heart rate calms and then climbs again at the way Seungcheol is looking at him. Wonwoo shoves down the impulse to pull back, kicks it into a far corner of his heart and stomps with a vicious metaphorical twist of his Starfleet-issue heeled boots.

It takes a second to look away from Seungcheol's dark eyes, sparkling even in the dim transition point between bright hall and warm quarters, and then another second to look away from his mouth. He's rewarded, when he finally manages the feat, by realizing Seungcheol is wearing a sunshine yellow tunic, with large twin red roses embroidered down the chest.

Seungcheol notices him looking, glances down at his own chest, tucking his chin in to do it, and it's awkward and silly and Wonwoo loves him fiercely. He _loves him._ He opens his mouth to say so when Seungcheol chuckles and frees one hand from Wonwoo's shoulder to pet down his own chest, and something about it stuns Wonwoo lovesick brain mute and stupid.

"We went down the piers after everything with the _Antares,_ remember? When they grounded us to 'decompress'?" Wonwoo can hear the air quotes they always do whenever they talk about the Fleet's euphemism for _'putting the entire crew in a controlled environment to check and see if they've all gone space crazy'_. Wonwoo traces one of the roses delicately, helpless, and nods.

Seungcheol clears his throat and goes on. "Woozi was wearing every single coat we all owned, remember that? The whole, whatever that was, fucked with his internal regulatory system and he was so pissy about it, and he looked like a rainbow marshmallow baby topped off with a pompom." Wonwoo snickers meanly, he really had looked ridiculous, a murderous ball of fluff waddling down Historic Pier 39.

"And you were cold and pretending not to be, no, shut up, I'm telling the story and you are a liar, Jeon Wonwoo, you were shivering." Wonwoo thinks Seungcheol is going to cover his mouth to shut him up but he puts his hand over Wonwoo's instead, pressing Wonwoo's palm to his chest. In a shivering fit of bravery, Wonwoo weaves their pinkies together.

Seungcheol swallows hard, and keeps talking. "So we go into that one weird old shop that smelled like seaweed and mothballs, Woozi couldn't even stand to be in there, he sat out on a bench calmly telling the seagulls looking for food why hotdogs are bad for their health. And we were trying on all the ridiculous hats, old jean jackets, you put on three clashing silk scarves and some trench coat."

Seungcheol pauses again, letting the memory settle between them, and slides the hand on Wonwoo's shoulder up to gently cup the side of his neck. At some point they'd shifted in the doorway so Seungcheol has his back against the frame, head tipped so he's looking up at Wonwoo. They're close enough Wonwoo's chest brushes their joined hands where they're entangled over Seungcheol's heart.

"I came out of the dressing room in this shirt, thinking you'd laugh at how gaudy it is, but you didn't. You stopped, two Trilby hats and a pair of cat ears stacked on each other on your head, and you just stared at me. I remember being nervous, thinking maybe I looked so stupid it went sailing past funny into tragic, but then you said," and here he does a passable impression of Wonwoo, but not any version of himself he really recognizes. Too open, first of all. Too likeable. _"If the captain's uniform looked like that we'd never have trouble convincing anyone to sign a treaty ever again."_

Wonwoo can't look at him anymore, mortified. He really had always been obvious, hadn't he? He'd thought he'd been hiding it well, thought he'd been unaffected, cool. He hadn't even thought, then, that what he felt was love.

Seungcheol's gentle fingers on his cheek direct him to tip his face back down, to look at him. He traces his thumb over Wonwoo's mouth, soft and reverent, and he's smiling ruefully, eyes distant, lost in a past he didn't need a portal to fall into.

Wonwoo twists his hand in Seungcheol's grip so they're palm to palm, fingers interwoven, squeezes tightly, calling him back to the here and now. Even if this is the end of things, even if Seungcheol knows and it can never be the same, Wonwoo will always want him, here and now.

"I should've said it then," Seungcheol says, blinking himself back to Wonwoo's eyes. He looks fierce now, and apologetic, and Wonwoo's always loved just how much of Seungcheol he shows on his face, even when it clashes, beautiful, always so fucking beautiful.

"What?" Wonwoo surprises himself by whispering.

"That I love you. That you're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Even shivering and denying it, even with two trilbies and a pair of cat ears on your head.” He looks sad, now, which is backwards, which sets Wonwoo’s heart skittering like a frightened cat. “Even in love with someone else."

Wonwoo freezes, head to toe. And then, like the first breath after drowning, he remembers he has another hand, and he wraps it quick and harsh around Seungcheol's waist and drags him in, because he'll die if they're separated by one more inch.

 _"Never,"_ he hisses in the last gap between their lips. "Not for one god damn second has there ever been anyone worth loving but you."

They're kissing before the sentence has crossed the distance between throat and eardrum, swallowing the last of it between them, a secret kept by two.

✦✦✦

Wonwoo has had more than his fair share of first times sleeping with new partners. He's had _mostly_ first times, really. It's not something that's ever bothered him before. He's comfortable in his sexuality, enjoys the thrill of learning someone new, loves the natural high that comes with figuring out how someone likes to be pleased, telling them how to please him. It shouldn't be different with Seungcheol, except it is. In ways Wonwoo never guessed, it is.

Seungcheol notices he's nervous before Wonwoo does, which is new for Wonwoo, who's used to partners that, generally, can't read him well at all. Usually he can hide any fleeting sparks of nerves if he wants, bury discomfort in a position change, get bossy if he feels himself locking up.

Wonwoo's got his wrists pinned to the bed, Seungcheol's body broad and heavy over him, and Seungcheol stops leaving hickey's too high on his neck for uniform shirts to cover to say, "What's wrong?"

Wonwoo blinks, pants a little, flexes his fingers without thinking. Seungcheol notices and swears, quickly turning his grip on Wonwoo's wrists to a caress. He pulls back, but before Wonwoo can lament the cold air rushing in, he's being coaxed to sit upright, Seungcheol's hands rubbing, wrist to elbow and then elbow to shoulder and back again.

"I'm sorry, baby," and isn't that a thrill. _Baby,_ coming out of Seungcheol's mouth, the same mouth that was just driving Wonwoo insane. "I should've asked first if you like that." He's watching Wonwoo intently, hands never still. It should feel oppressive, maybe, but all Wonwoo feels is loved.

"No, it's fine, I." Wonwoo stops, jaw clicking. "I didn't know I didn't like that, either," and he's a little bit dumbfounded to know it's true.

"That's okay, sweetheart," Seungcheol murmurs, pressing kisses along Wonwoo's jaw like he can't help it. He pulls back with a sad little grunt, like he's making himself do it. "What _do_ you like?"

"You," Wonwoo answers, reflexive and corny as fuck. Seungcheol beams at him, kisses him hard and fast.

"That's great, baby, that's terrific, I love that, but can you give me something a little more specific to work with?" 

He goes back to leaving little kisses along Wonwoo's jaw and down his neck, so Wonwoo's looking at the ceiling when he says, "I like it when you know me, and like me anyway."

He's scared to look away from the ceiling. Terrified, really. He locks up like a Risan clam, or starts to, before Seungcheol tips his head back down and pries him back open again.

"I know you, Wonwoo. And I like you, always. More every day." 

Wonwoo has learned not to trust what people say in bed, or his bullshit meter to tell what's true and what isn't. But he knows Seungcheol, better than he knows doctoring, better than he knows himself. And he means this, in that simple-truth way that makes it obvious to Wonwoo that he would say it in any other context, too. In daylight, with their clothes on, in the mess hall, on the bridge. 

In San Francisco city hall in front of a judge and two witnesses, too, but the thought bolts from Wonwoo's mind before he can even try to grasp it.

"I'm going to suck your cock now," Wonwoo says, pushing Seungcheol back to the mattress with a shove to the chest.

Seungcheol bounces and laughs, breathless and beautiful.

✦✦✦

Wonwoo is in the middle of receiving a round three blowjob when he comes to a very startling realization.

"Did you think I was in love with _Mingyu?"_

Seungcheol pulls off with a _pop_ and Wonwoo's cock jerks like it's wondering just where he thinks he's going. To his credit, Seungcheol wraps a _perfect, incredible, Jesus God right like that_ hand around it and twists just the way Wonwoo likes. Wonwoo is absolutely going to marry him someday.

"Can we not talk about Mingyu in bed? Jihoon will kill us."

"Oh my god you _did!_ Hah! As if I would ever — Wait, _ah, fuck, hnng yes,_ wait does that mean you _wouldn't?"_ he asks, like that's a real Standard question and not sex addled gibberish. In his defense, Seungcheol has fantastic hands.

Seungcheol slides two perfect fingers into Wonwoo's still loose hole and starts fucking him, slow and torturous. He hums while Wonwoo keens.

"Wouldn't kill you for wanting someone else in our bed?" He adds a third finger, still jacking him off with brutal little flicks of his wrist, and hovers over Wonwoo's body so Wonwoo can't look anywhere but at him. "I want what you want, sweetheart."

Wonwoo comes so hard he sees stars.

✦✦✦

Wonwoo finds Mingyu in the ship’s library, frowning down at a real ink-and-paper textbook. He doesn’t notice Wonwoo coming, so he gets a glimpse of it; pages filled with Vulcan script with translation to Korean.

Mingyu startles and then smiles when he sees it’s Wonwoo that’s snuck up on him. He reads Wonwoo’s face and glances back down at the textbook, chuckling a little self-consciously, rubbing a thumb at his hairline.

“I thought it might make more sense, Vulcan to Korean as opposed to Standard. I’m fluent in both, but well. First languages, right?”

Wonwoo nods. “Yeah, I did that with Deltan. Not sure it helped but at some point nothing can hurt.”

Mingyu laughs, showing his canines with it. Wonwoo’s not sure what to do with a Mingyu that's happy to see him, to share something with him. Wonwoo’s definitely not sure what to do with the little kernel of warmth he feels about it, too.

“What brings you in here? No offense, I needed a rescue before I gave myself a migraine, but did you want something?”

Wonwoo slips the paperback out of the deep pocket of Wonwoo's old Academy hoodie, slides it onto the table next to Mingyu’s elbow. They both just stare at it, the cover faded, Captain Son’s face still bold and kind-looking, and not nearly as handsome as he was in real life.

“I wanted to return that,” Wonwoo says softly.

Mingyu hums a little, traces the edges of the book with his pointer finger, two laps around, and then three. Then he picks the book up and offers it back to Wonwoo.

“I think,” Mingyu starts, and then hesitates, frowning like he’s looking for the words. “I think you should have this, for now, anyway. Not that you have to read it again, or even keep it. But.” He takes a deep breath and lets it out again, shoulders squaring. “If you meet anyone, and it seems like they might need it, then. Pass it along.”

Wonwoo looks at the book, Mingyu’s hand holding it, Mingyu’s arm leading to his broad shoulders, his future-captain face. He thinks about Seungcheol lazy in their bed, cuddling their cat and waiting for Wonwoo to come back and bring him medbay coffee because he _insists_ it’s the best on the ship. He thinks about Captain Son and Wonho, and kisses on knuckles, and the intensity of grief, watching a falling star.

“Okay,” Wonwoo says, taking the book. “I will.”

**Author's Note:**

> direct any complaints to me, and any love back to the originator of this universe, because she deserves it


End file.
